I keep finding new ways to be a fool.
My father, at 92, is no fool; he is very sharp. He taught me to live efficiently. While driving, for example, do not go too far over the speed limit, he advised. Note his reasoning: It’s not because you might strike and kill an unwitting pedestrian innocently crossing the roadway in front of you, and certainly not because you might mutilate or kill yourself or your passengers — but because being pulled over by a cop and getting a ticket takes time, and as my father said, “That kills your speed advantage.”
He’s 92, and he’s still driving. The folks in Dad’s neighborhood are at no risk. He will not exceed the speed limit because he doesn’t want to be late on account of being apprehended by the law.
I believe it was my father’s efficiency impulse — make the most of every moment, don’t squander this precious God-given life — that led me to my current late-stage lifestyle. It’s a life of not-quite-but-almost-obsessive-compulsive productivity. Make the most of every moment, every object, every stray corner inadvertently torn from your toilet paper.
(Pick it up, before you even stand up, and immediately put it where it belongs. Not because you’ll feel better, but because if you wait till later, you’ve wasted the three seconds it takes to bend down a second time.)
My modus operandi is: Don’t squander even the slightest bit of this precious God-given life, this ever-unfolding adventure of springtime potholes and Argilla Road roadkill and Town Meeting brouhahae.
Ever since I moved into my beloved antique home (now 207 years old) here in Ipswich, I have maintained my commitment to my father’s legacy, the life of efficiency. When I buy a bag of ice from the Cumberland Farms convenience store, less than a mile from my house, it comes with a little flat white plastic clip that holds the bag closed. When the bag is empty, the bag itself can go into “film plastic” recycling. (That’s a separate station at our house, not the same as general recycling; film plastic gets dropped off in the big box just inside the front doors at Market Basket.)
But what to do with the little flat white plastic clip?
“You know, you can throw those out,” my wife said.
No! It’s plastic, so it’s awful — it will live forever in a landfill (bad) or wind up in the ocean (also bad), possibly snorted into the nostril of an unsuspecting North Pacific right whale. So I don’t want to simply toss it in the garbage.
Also, in my vast experience of opening and closing bags of ice, I’ve observed that the little white plastic clip is prone to break. It’s cheap, after all, and flimsy. So sometimes you need ice and you pull the clip off the bag and the clip snaps in two, and you need a replacement. In other words, that little clip has a certain potential value.
My father’s bottom line, I am sure, would be: When you finish a bag of ice, keep the little flat white plastic clip, so when you break one, you’ll have a replacement handy.
The perfect solution. Thank you, Dad.
And I know just the place for storing a replacement clip.
There’s a certain drawer in every kitchen where junk tends to collect, and in our kitchen, this happens to be the drawer where we keep things we need for the preservation of leftovers.
Cellophane. Aluminum foil. Wax paper, freezer paper. Chip clips, twist ties, plastic bags dutifully rinsed out and thoroughly dried and then stuffed in there somewhere. Don’t call it a junk drawer. Call it a sustainability center. No, never mind, that’s too phony even for me.
Our junk drawer, right there next to the fridge, is the perfect place to toss a little flat white plastic ice bag clip when it’s survived its term in the freezer and outlived its immediate usefulness.
“You know,” my wife gently said, as I tossed yet another little flat white plastic ice bag clip into the junk drawer, “you can throw those things out.”
No. When one breaks, I’m going to need a replacement. Dad would be proud.
As with any junk drawer, however, there comes a time when the chaos progresses from unseemly to untenable. The sustainability center becomes unsustainable, if only because you can’t find anything in there anymore, or you can’t stand to go rummaging for it because it’s such a mess in there.
In a marriage, one of the key questions is which partner has the greater tolerance for disorder. In my current marriage, it’s a dead heat. But last week, on the junk drawer front, I pulled ahead.
We have not lived in Ipswich long — only 15 years, a blip by Ipswich standards — but the day finally came when my wife couldn’t stand the junk drawer anymore. She began pulling everything out, setting it all on the counter, so she could cull and catalog and consolidate.
And as she excavated the last of the detritus, there was only one thing left at the bottom of the drawer: a swirling sea, almost a soil, of little flat white plastic ice bag clips. I don’t want to exaggerate, but I would estimate my wife disposed of something in the neighborhood of twelve thousand little flat white plastic ice bag clips. It took several trips.
I was embarrassed, of course. I felt like a fool.
Upon further reflection, however, I would like to point out that in all these years, whenever a little flat white plastic ice bag clip broke, I was never once stranded for lack of a replacement.
As you read these words, I’m at terrible risk.
Doug Brendel lives a junk-free life on outer Linebrook Road in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Follow his nonsense at Outsidah.Substack.com. If you live in Ipswich, get serious recycling insights at IpswichMA.gov/270/Solid-Waste-Recycling.)
The Outsidah 